December 2012   « Archives | Current News »

UPDATE: There was a hotfix for both the Darkmoon Glowfly and Crow. Both should be available to capture in all qualities now. Happy collecting!

The Darkmoon Faire is back in town, and there are new pets! Be sure to head over to the fairgrounds to purchase a Darkmoon Hatchling for 90 tickets, and challenge Jeremy Feasel to a tamer battle for a chance at the Darkmoon Eye!

The Darkmoon Glowfly is also a new addition, and can be found flying around the island. They can vary in level, so keep looking for that perfect one to catch!

Darkmoon Pet Bugs
Currently the Darkmoon Glowfly seems to come in only uncommon (green) quality. This might be a similar bug that the Jungle Grub and Hedgehogs experienced prior to patch 5.1.

The Crow pet (pictured) listed in the Pet Journal is currently not capturable. It can be found on the Darkmoon Island as a normal critter, and also as a secondary opponent during a wild pet battle.

It's unknown if the bug lies within the Pet Journal and the Crow was mistakenly added, or if it should be a capturable companion but currently isn't flagged as such. We suspect that it might be the latter, similar to the bug affecting these six wild pets, all of which were fixed shortly after the release of MoP. Hopefully this will be clarified and fixed soon!

The Cinder Kitten is now on sale at the Blizzard Store! This cute kitty costs $10 (10 EUR for the EU region) and can be attached to a single Battle.net account.

For Charity
Not only is this pet amazingly adorable, purchasing it also helps a good cause!

From now until December 31, 2012 at 11:59 PM (PST), 100% of the proceeds will be donated to the American Red Cross's Hurricane Sandy relief efforts. This charity fund will help those affected by the recent superstorm.

We recently had the privilege of interviewing Cory "Mumper" Stockton, World of Warcraft's Lead Content Designer, to discuss all things pets!

Our half-hour session included a detailed conversation about the future of pet battles, new pets and pet collecting in general.

Highlights:

• Cory provided a sneak peak at the pet design process.
• Future patches and expansions won't contain quite as many pets as we saw in MoP and 5.1.
• Blizzard is very pleased with Pet Battles — more than 50% of players are participating.
• Epic (and possibly legendary) pet qualities will definitely come, in time.
• Pet gender may play a role down the road — think "cross-breeding" your pets.
• Older pet models will see some updating (frogs and snakes were mentioned), possibly for 5.2.
• Some wild pets will become tradable... eventually.
• Wild "boss pet" encounters, where you’d use your entire team to take down an über pet, are in the works.
• Dog-lovers rejoice! More traditional-style dog pets à la Perky Pug are on the horizon!

And those are just the highlights! There's plenty more pet talk, so be sure to listen to the full interview.

Listen Now:

Download the Interview

We'd like to thank Cory again for his time and super-insightful answers. If you love pets, you don't want to miss this interview!

Developers have been hard at work formulating and then implementing fixes for many of the bugs in Pet Battles. Here are two notable recent hotfixes.

Retroactive Quality Upgrade
Three pets that were intended to be rare quality but were not, recently had their quality updated. Unfortunately, the change to the Darkmoon Hatchling, Singing Cricket, and Red Cricket was not retroactive when the hotfix went live. Players that learned the pet prior to the hotfix seemed to be stuck with a lower quality companion in their Pet Journal, despite the updated qualities.

However, Mumper recently confirmed in a Twitter response to @WarcraftPets that developers have found a solution that will convert already known pets to their proper quality.

I was waiting for confirmation.. Woohoo! Red Cricket, Singing Cricket and Darkmoon Hatchling should all convert to rare now.

This fix may take some time to take effect for all players, but there have already been reports from some collectors that the three pets listed above have turned into rare quality companions.

Safari Hat
After this past Tuesday's Maintenance, it seems as though the Safari Hat is now being mailed to characters on eligible accounts!

In some cases, you may need to relog or zone into a dungeon after completing the achievement Taming the World, before the hat will show up in your mailbox.

Don't be alarmed if you're suddenly swimming in hats. All of your characters receiving this stylish headgear is intended.

So what are you waiting for? Now that you look the part, get to hunting collecting!

A hotfix will be released soon that will stop max level pets from soaking up experience from their lower level team mates in a pet battle. [source]

We will soon be applying a hotfix that causes level-25 pets to no longer “steal” experience from your lower-level pets. Previously, if you had a level-3 and level-25 pet grouped together for a battle, the XP earned would be shared between the two at the end. This resulted in some players doing what they could to kill off their level-25 pet so the level-3 pet would get all of the experience. You no longer need to worry about this as the level-3 pet will now receive 100% of the XP that’s earned, so long as it has participated in at least one round of combat.

This change, combined with the implementation of the Safari Hat and increased experience gains from the Pandaria Tamer dailies, should help speed up the leveling process.

It will also make leveling using wild pet battles more efficient for those using max level pets on their teams.

The hotfix requires a restart, so we may not see this update to experience until Tuesday.

Enjoy our monthly web comic created for WoW pet collectors! We feature a new World of Petcraft strip every month.


About the Artist
Meaghan McLaughlin is an aspiring artist and the author of "Nerds Illustrated." She's currently available to create custom WoW artwork.

"Happy Holidays from the World of Warcraft team! Here’s a small present to tide you over until the new year." —Blizzard


This was the teaser kindly provided by Blizzard late last night to various WoW fansites, including WarcraftPets.

While we have no confirmation that any pets will be found within the new 5.2 raid dungeon, Thunder Isle, what we do know for certain is that the PTR will be up in early January. And there will most definitely be some new pets to collect the next patch!

So brace yourself... exciting things are coming after the holidays. And you can count on us to bring you all the juicy pet-related news.

UPDATE: We've added a summary of the official 5.2 patch notes.

Blizzard recently announced that the 5.2 PTR will be open for player testing in January of 2013, however datamining has already started on the latest PTR build. [source]

Three new possible pets have popped up!

• Gusting Grimoire (Bind on Pick Up)
• Living Sandling
• Red Panda (Bind on Pick Up)

WoW Insider speculates that the Gusting Grimoire will be the common pet loot from the upcoming TCG expansion deck, Timewalkers: Betrayal of the Guardian. This might very well be the "Floating Spellbook" that many online card vendors are advertising as one of the loot cards from this deck.

The Red Panda was originally datamined from the 5.1 PTR and was the reward for an achievement to defeat 8 legendary pets. Unfortunately this companion and the achievement never made it into the 5.1 live release, but thankfully has reappeared in 5.2!

Official 5.2 Patch Notes
Here is an abridged version of the 5.2 PTR patch notes. You can view the full list of notes here.

• Battle Pet Bandages are BoA and can stack to 25.
• You have a chance to receive a Battle-Stone from a PVP Pet Battle.
• Existing non-wild pets that changed colors each time they're summoned will be able to swap colors again. There will be a few new color-changers too.
• Players that are max level will have a chance to receive a Lesser Charm of Good Fortune from a successful Pet Battle with an opponent withing 5 levels of their highest level pet on their team. Higher level pets have a higher chance of yielding a charm.
• For those not level capped, winning a Pet Battle against a pet team that's within 5 levels of a player's highest level pet on their team will award player experience.
• Forfeiting a battle will not cause the pet to despawn, but will cause damage to the fleeing pet team.
• Pets will once again respawn should a player disconnect during a battle.
• However, any pet that was defeated during that battle will not respawn.
• "Elite Battle Pets" have a chance to spawn in the wild. Rather than a team of three, a player's pet team will face off against one elite pet! These new encounters will be part of a quest, and completing it will reward the Red Panda.

We'll soon find out about these pets and more once the 5.2 PTR is ready for testing. Stay tuned!

WarcraftPets Holiday Loot Giveaway!
We've heard from a reliable source that Father Winter will be dropping by our Facebook page on the afternoons of Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this week. He's got a handful of pets that he'll be giving away to random boys and girls who comment on our daily Wall posts.

So if you're not already doing so, be sure to follow WarcraftPets on Facebook and pay close attention in the days ahead!

Happy Holidays
We'd like to thank you for supporting WarcraftPets over the years. It's our ongoing privilege to serve all of you pet enthusiasts. We look forward to bringing you more exciting pets and news throughout the New Year.

Warmest wishes for a pet-filled 2013, along with a generous RNG.


About the Artist:  Michelle Spalding (Drrum) is a talented graphic artist and the creator of the most impressive gallery of pets and mounts you'll find.